Cake
by awesomesen
Summary: To Subaru's great confusion, Yuzuriha greeted him one bright summer morning with a cheerful, 'happy birthday.' [gift!fic, gen]
1. I

..._I hope I don't get in trouble for posting this here. I was cleaning out my backlog of livejournal 'fic and found this one again. You see, a friend - finmefiant - had a birthday a couple of months back... and i completely forgot about it until she mentioned it in her livejournal. i offered to make her a last minute gift, and this is the result. (laugh) since she likes subaru, i thought i'd write subaru 'fic. and since i don't like angst, i thought i'd write one without angst._

_subaru with no angst! what as i thinking?_

_anyway, mefiant miss, happy birthday... for the second time. hope you don't mind my posting this here._

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**cake**_  
_

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To Subaru's great confusion, Yuzuriha greeted him one bright summer morning with a cheerful, "happy birthday!" Maybe it wouldn't be polite, he thought, to bring up the fact that his birthday was actually in February, so he let it go. 

Then Kamui stammered a happy birthday, a few minutes later. Arashi did no such thing, but she seemed to be a bit nicer than she normally was around him all the same.

Subaru wondered what he was missing, for the younger Seals to be acting this way. He put two and two together. And went hunting for Sorata.

The boy was in the kitchen, staring impatiently at the oven. Subaru had the odd feeling that if he were to turn on the over light and peer inside, he'd find a cake baking. "You're the one behind all this," he announced.

Sorata was unflappable. He didn't even look away from the oven. "You bet."

"My birthday is in February," Subaru said, trying logic.

"That's cool. Mine's in August." Logic failed.

"Kamui and Yuzuriha both wished me a happy birthday."

"Yup."

"I wonder why?"

"Cuz I told them and Neechan that it was your birthday today." As if on cue, a timer dinged. Sorata grinned and busied himself with oven mitts and removing the cake from the oven. It was round and chocolate. Subaru stared at the cake and Sorata with more than a little bewilderment.

"Why?" he finally asked.

"My birthday isn't for another two months," Sorata explained, as if there was nothing at all weird about any of this. "Yuzuriha-chan's has already passed. Kamui and Neechan don't have their birthdays until winter. I wanted a party."

"Why me?" Subaru asked, watching blankly as Sorata began to frost the cake with rose-pink icing.

Sorata's smile was oddly gentle. "I thought you might need some people that liked you." Subaru couldn't decide whether to berate the boy for overstepped a boundary—what boundary? Since when was this wrong?—but Sorata grinned his usual way after a beat. "And, you look like you need a good feeding!"

"It's not my birthday," Subaru settled for saying. Sorata began to frost white blobs—maybe flowers of some kind?—onto the pink and chocolate.

"So?" Sorata looked directly at Subaru for the first time, smiling just enough that Subaru had to take him seriously—if he had looked serious, Subaru might have been able to get angry and leave. "If it's a problem, Subaru-san, give me a reason why, you know?"

"I don't celebrate my birthday," Subaru said at last. "Not since—not for years."

"If you don't celebrate on your actual birthday," Sorata said brightly, "all the more reason to have cake now. Right?"

There were too many things Subaru couldn't say. He was quiet, deathly quiet, and finally took a sharp breath. "Arisugawa-kun..."

Sorata stopped his frosting to pay attention. "Hm?"

Too many thoughts. Too many reasons. Too much of everything. He meant to retort, but couldn't find the words. The excuses that he came to were too long, too personal, too—the smell of sugar frosting and warm chocolate was unbearable.

So Subaru fell back to politeness. "Thank you very much for your kindness."

Sorata hid his smirk in a grin, his victory well earned. "No problem," he said, giving to Subaru a small handful of wax blue cake-candles. "Happy birthday."

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	2. II epilogue

_a few weeks after i wrote the first chapter of this story, the girl i wrote it for requested in a meme on my livejournal that i write a second "scene" to it. so, here it is: cake, part two. enjoy._

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Two weeks into July, it poured rain and thunder, a crashing summer storm that caused even Subaru to flinch a little, some repressed Seal side of him fearing an attack with each retort of sound and light. He hung around his apartment in his socks, considered calling his grandmother and decided in the end not to. There was no point in calling someone just for the sake of talking. It was frivolous, and more importantly, Subaru had the feeling that if he tried, if he called someone—Grandmother, Kamui or even Se—the line would go dead. Or he would have nothing to say, his throat would swell closed and the other person would hang up or worse, not hang up, they'd talk until Subaru himself was forced to cut the conversation short.

Rain always put him in a bad mood. He disliked the feeling of wetness and disliked being cooped up in his apartment equally.

Cooking. It was nearly lunchtime, Subaru would make himself lunch. A real lunch for a change, a warm lunch with vegetables and meat and a tall glass of milk, lessons of nutrition taught to him long ago. He had never been the cook of the family, but Ho—he had been taught the basics of meal preparation, and was sure he could manage something simple. He envisioned chicken fillets and steamed broccoli, soba and tempura, anpan and crust less sandwiches. The idea of the meal was more sustaining then the food itself would be, and Subaru was so unexpectedly caught up in the longing for it that he was surprised upon opening the door to his fridge: empty but for a plastic box, a carton of baking powder, and half a bottle of orange juice.

He hadn't known how high his hopes had been until they fell again. Subaru was about to swing the door shut again and go out to a convenience store, buy a bento box and eat that in the rain. It didn't seem worth it to buy good food, not with his original plan somehow dashed. Subaru thought to drink the orange juice first, though, some empty promise of health and nutrition. His eye caught on the Tupperware container, and he found himself unable to recall what it held. Curiosity struck, and he placed the bottle of juice on the counter beside the fridge, taking the plastic container out to examine it.

Subaru could have remembered it by smell alone: sickly sweet sugar frosting mixed with stale cake. "From my birthday," he muttered to himself, before correcting himself mentally—from the party Sorata had said was for his birthday. The dinner had been cooked by the boy, who claimed the dishes were all Kouya's finest (they had been good, Subaru had to admit). The cake was dessert. Subaru had only picked at his portion. Yuzuriha had somehow gotten a party hat on Inuki. Kamui had been shy all evening, Sorata perhaps louder than usual, Arashi a little more friendly. It had been... sort of nice, Subaru decided.

But only a little.

He didn't go out after all, and even though chocolate cake tasted terrible with orange juice, he ate every crumb.

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End file.
